Has Nintendo's big NX secret just been revealed?

REVEALED: A Taiwanese company may have just let Nintendo's big secret slip?

Little to nothing is actually known about Nintendo's upcoming NX console.

Is it even a console? Is it a handheld? Will it pair with other devices like the PS4? A lot of what has been said is either educated guesses or rank speculation.

Until Nintendo themselves reveal more details about the NX - likely at E3 this year - many of us will be completely in the dark as to what it is or what it's capable of.

Well, unless of course companies working with Nintendo continue to reveal secrets about the project.

“Macronix has a long-running history with Nintendo”

At a recent quarterly results conference call, Macronix International Co Ltd President CY Lu revealed that the company will be providing products to the NX and that the console will be launching this year.

Macronix is an international tech company which has a long-running history with Nintendo's portable line of products, having produced ROM memory for various Nintendo game cartridges, including the Nintendo 64, Nintendo DS and Nintendo 3DS.

Here's a rough translation of the information coming out of Taiwan, courtesy of a NeoGAF member: "CY Lu said Macronix will supply memory slots for NX, and that the company has considerable expectation to NX.

"Even though CY Lu declined to comment whether the supplied products are ROM, he said he expects ROM sales this year to be exceptional."

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Mario was originally known as Jumpman

So what does this all mean?

Well on the one hand it could mean that the NX is indeed a portable device similar to the 3DS.

But this surely couldn't be true if Nintendo are lining up a console to replace the under performing Wii U.

Ok, well it could be portable, but it's more plausible that the NX's primary focus will be as a home console with a card slot, just like the good old days of the N64 and SNES.

Supporting this theory is also a patent (US 20150231511) filed by Nintendo in February last year for a system that lacked an optical disc drive.

According to the patent, this system would have a “card slot” that “can read or write data from/to the attached memory card” and “store the read-out program in the first memory or the internal HDD”.

The adoption of Nintendo game cartridges for a home console could have big implications for the NX.

On the one hand cartridges - like those used in a 3DS - are fast and can hold a lot of data.

It would allow Nintendo to do away with the large internal moving parts needed for a disk drive - perhaps replacing that extra space for a large internal storage.

But equally for all the benefits of a cartridge, they can be more expensive to produce.

Furthermore, it's not certain what effect this could have on publishers and third-party developers, who currently release games solely on disc for PS4, Xbox One and Wii U.

Therefore the addition of having to release titles on a second format, could drive up costs and push publishers and third-party developers.